TCM is running "A Foreign Affair", ( [link] ) at 11 PM tonight, a lesser-known Billy Wilder and one of my all-time favourites. Jean Arthur has this scene where she talks about an old lover who betrayed her for a political gain that completely shatters my heart (man, she was amazing in this film), and her romantic rival is played by Marlene Dietrich, who is 1) awesome, and 2) sings a couple of great musical numbers -- composed specifically for her by Frederick Hollander, if I recall. The only thing that kind of puts the damper on the film is that I was never convinced the male lead was all that -- certainly not interesting enough to make these two fabulous women fall for him anyway.

TBL is definitely better with alcohol. I know someone who started drinking white russians because she liked that movie.

I can take it or leave it, but John Turturro is always strangely fascinating.

I know someone who started drinking white russians because she liked that movie.

You make a hell of a caucasian, Jackie.

Anybody up for a Big Lebowski viewing party at my place?

I'll bring the rug.

I still crack myself up saying "You know, that [fill in the name of a piece of furniture or decoration] just pulls the room together."

I use "say what you will about [foo]: at least it's an ethos" in a similarly generic way.

Also, I am following Theo around the board today. Whee!

I always consider LAURA an odd fit with the rest of noir.

I think that's what makes it memorable. It's a little bit Chandler and a little bit inside-out Gaslight.

Are there really very many "noir" films outside of the noir era that were shot in high-contrast B&W?

I will say, when I try to think about noir as a genre, my only happy candidates for modern-noiritude are ones that do not ape their forbears stylistically. Blod Simple; After Dark, My Sweet; and others that are resolutely part of their own era. Even The Grifters, a classic of noir literature, comes across as something broader and more ambitious when you see it on film, unmoored as it is from time. Period pieces always feel like, like period pieces, rather than like films noirs. Like museum objects rather than nasty living things.

Of nasty living things (I'll allow the name "neo-noir"), there seem to be waves, and the latest wave (in the late 80s, early 90s) was almost completely in independent film, so nobody saw them. (Unless you're us.)

what's Miller's Crossing if not noir?

Also speaking of nasty living things, I'd be really interested in seeing a remake of the original The Glass Key, in a modern gangsterish setting. I think it would be really cool, and still pretty relevant today. The villain could be Puffy Combs.

Does any classic noir film have a happy ending?

Kiss of Death ends with Victor Mature shot several times in the guts, but alive and having kept his daughters and wife out of danger. So, that's kind of happy, presuming they took him to a good surgeon.

So, a question for all us noirheads: what's your ur-text of (original) noir? What's the one movie you would point to and say "That's film noir"? Mine is Night and the City (1950).

I think maybe I'd choose Double Indemnity.

Body Heat is good neonoir, I think. It works in all the noir ways without feeling pastichey.

I'd take The Big Sleep.